Interesting related article, but about Automobile factories and not shipyards. But it is about robots in a factory;
http://www.economist.com/node/21552897
http://www.economist.com/node/21552897
Shipyard workers
- Thread starter rancke
- Start date
LOL
Now you are just justifying my point.
And your example divides in 1/2 with out considering work enviroment. Nothing wrong with that but by your example at TL 15 it would only take 469 employees to build said ship.
Dave Chase
No, slacking here just Chemo treatment for Cancer, but I totally agree, this subject is much better than what I am doing in RL.
Dave Chase
Hi Dave,
Hope you are doing well, seems our game on the mong forums has slowed down as well.
-Rob
While this all seems perfectly reasonable to me, I would like to point out that the MegaTraveller Control Point rules state that required control points increase with TL, and imply that comparable higher TL equipment needs MORE engineers to operate and maintain (or state of the art computers).
This could be a quirk of that particular version of Traveller, or a feature of the OTU not detailed in some other rule versions.
[Just tossing it into the fray for thought and reference, use or ignore to taste.]
A crew of 500 workers, working in three shifts. Most of them welders. The rest are plumbers, electricians, mechanics, painters. The small group of software guys come in later as usual to bring the ship online and train the fresh crew. A couple software guys remain onboard after launch for when things go bad.
Only when not banned from so doing. Some places will in fact ban robot replacements on the grounds of "right to work"...
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
I have collected a fair amount of information on production rates per man-hour and man-day for World War aircraft, tanks, merchant ships, and naval vessels which I have used to develop production factors for Traveller. I am not going to put them here, as using them, the construction time, in orbit, for an Azhanti High Lightning class ship is 12 years, and a 500,000 displacement ton ship would be between 50 and a 100 years. That would definitely not be acceptable to the big ship fans of the forum. The cost for those ships would be significantly higher than the costs given in the Fighting Ship supplement.
In general outline, I have it broken down into three categories: warship or military, commercial passenger, and commercial cargo. Military-type ships have the highest man-hour per ton requirement, commercial passenger ships have the medium man-hour per ton requirement, and cargo ships have the lowest man-hour per ton requirement.
In terms of ship yard workers, I am including only that labor force used to actually needed to assemble the various components into a completed hull. That would include administrative and facility maintenance overhead. I am not included all of the manpower and equipment needed to produce all of the various components. That would massively increase the total populace required. I think that the minimum size construction facility would be around 100 to 500 full-time permanent employees, with very little in terms of transient help.
I am plugging in a production rate per man for drives and power plant however, as that is the single largest component cost in the ship, although warships are likely to have much of their cost absorbed by sensor and weapons suites. The drive production factors do assume the existence of a reasonably equipped production factory with a labor force of around 1000 or so.
Ships built in orbit will cost significantly more than ships built in an atmospheric "shirt sleeve" environment, as the workers will require Vacuum Suit and Zero-G Construction skills, and also have much higher insurance costs against accidents. The component materials are going to have to be manufactured elsewhere and then boosted into orbit, greatly increasing the component cost. I am assuming that the work will proceed at a slower pace based on the space environment. In all cases, there is a maximum number of men who can be working on a ship at any given time.
In general outline, I have it broken down into three categories: warship or military, commercial passenger, and commercial cargo. Military-type ships have the highest man-hour per ton requirement, commercial passenger ships have the medium man-hour per ton requirement, and cargo ships have the lowest man-hour per ton requirement.
In terms of ship yard workers, I am including only that labor force used to actually needed to assemble the various components into a completed hull. That would include administrative and facility maintenance overhead. I am not included all of the manpower and equipment needed to produce all of the various components. That would massively increase the total populace required. I think that the minimum size construction facility would be around 100 to 500 full-time permanent employees, with very little in terms of transient help.
I am plugging in a production rate per man for drives and power plant however, as that is the single largest component cost in the ship, although warships are likely to have much of their cost absorbed by sensor and weapons suites. The drive production factors do assume the existence of a reasonably equipped production factory with a labor force of around 1000 or so.
Ships built in orbit will cost significantly more than ships built in an atmospheric "shirt sleeve" environment, as the workers will require Vacuum Suit and Zero-G Construction skills, and also have much higher insurance costs against accidents. The component materials are going to have to be manufactured elsewhere and then boosted into orbit, greatly increasing the component cost. I am assuming that the work will proceed at a slower pace based on the space environment. In all cases, there is a maximum number of men who can be working on a ship at any given time.
Actually, they provide a very good baseline rate to compare to modern yard rates. WWII is what, TL 5? Modern is TL7, maybe TL8? That gives a nice baseline for comparison. (At least, it defines a slope...)
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
If you have better numbers for pounds of airframe weight produced per man-hour, could you please post them then?
As for shipyard production rates, the output per worker in tons of ship per year has stayed about the same since 1900, at about 10 tons of completed ship per man per year. For warships, the production rate per man-year has dropped considerably with the far more complex wiring and electronics load carried, along with a much higher standard of accommodation for the ship's crew.
Some general data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics covering a decade:
Series Id: IPUEN336___L000
Sector: Manufacturing
Industry: Transportation equipment manufacturing
NAICS Code: 336
Measure: Output per hour index (2002=100)
Duration: indexes and values
Base Year: 2002
Year Annual
2000 85.627
2001 89.118
2002 100.000
2003 108.921
2004 107.839
2005 113.349
2006 114.864
2007 126.148
2008 120.227
2009 114.714
2010 132.752
This suggests a trend towards increased productivity per worker over time ... a 2010 worker was 55% more productive than his 2000 counterpart.
[EDIT: Any thoughts on reconciling this with your data?]
Last edited:
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
Some general data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics covering a decade:
Series Id: IPUEN336___L000
Sector: Manufacturing
Industry: Transportation equipment manufacturing
NAICS Code: 336
Measure: Output per hour index (2002=100)
Duration: indexes and values
Base Year: 2002
Year Annual
2000 85.627
2001 89.118
2002 100.000
2003 108.921
2004 107.839
2005 113.349
2006 114.864
2007 126.148
2008 120.227
2009 114.714
2010 132.752
This suggests a trend towards increased productivity per worker over time ... a 2010 worker was 55% more productive than his 2000 counterpart.
[EDIT: Any thoughts on reconciling this with your data?]
I have zero interest in getting into an extended argument over productivity, especially with a moderator.
I simply would like to point out that the industry group cited includes the following:
I would suspect that the three Motor Vehicle manufacturing subsectors account for the vast amount of that productivity increase, if not all of it.
So, are these workers working 16 hour days seven days a week with 2 breaks per day, or 6 hours a day four day weeks with 5 breaks per day and 2 months annual leave?...
CT rules started with fixed construction sizes ... but, more plausibly, such times will vary over a fair range. A society on a war footing is generally going to have a much different rate of production than one simply supporting luxury ship building vs one whose primary economy is dependent on its yards.
Numbers for such are certainly definable for a setting, but the OTU paints such a broad brush, that it would be most useful to fixate on very specific 'shipyards'. I.e. Imperial starship/spaceship yards at Imperial starports/bases under x-regulations and y-conditions at TL such and such...
In other words, setup explicit qualifying conditions first such that a plausible and consistent mechanic can be defined. Trying to do so otherwise, with the OTU in its entirety, is just non-nonsensical, IMO.
CT rules started with fixed construction sizes ... but, more plausibly, such times will vary over a fair range. A society on a war footing is generally going to have a much different rate of production than one simply supporting luxury ship building vs one whose primary economy is dependent on its yards.
Numbers for such are certainly definable for a setting, but the OTU paints such a broad brush, that it would be most useful to fixate on very specific 'shipyards'. I.e. Imperial starship/spaceship yards at Imperial starports/bases under x-regulations and y-conditions at TL such and such...
In other words, setup explicit qualifying conditions first such that a plausible and consistent mechanic can be defined. Trying to do so otherwise, with the OTU in its entirety, is just non-nonsensical, IMO.
Depends on how soon you want your ship.
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